03. Masters of Flux and Anchor (3 page)

"I believe," the old wizard said carefully, "that cer¬tainly four, if not more, of the clusters are in such a position that the existing order could be overthrown in a moment, on orders from the shadowy authority who con¬trols them."

"But they couldn't hold them. We proved that years ago," the tall, stately Hjistoliran noted.

"They don't have to. Once all seven are under their influence, they need only wait until it is time and strike at once, quickly. They can hold long enough for all seven to take the temples and reach the Gates. You can see their enormous influence now. What scientific project takes precedence over all others in the eyes of Church and state?"

They thought a moment. "Inter-Anchor communi¬cations," the tiny, green Talanane said. "Oh, my!"

Mervyn nodded. "And they'll get it, too, if it is possible—and it almost certainly is, or no other safe¬guards against the Seven are really needed."

"Do you believe that they already control all seven, then?" Krupe asked him.

"No. The south is the key, in many ways. The New Eden Brotherhood is not merely a revolt by the have-nots against the Church and World, it is in every sense of the word a religious movement and an expansionist one. Within two years after the collapse of the Empire it had abrogated its treaties and made alliances with very powerful Fluxlords. Within five, it had overrun Anchor Bakha and secured the Fluxlands between. They have developed new and devastat¬ing weaponry that can be used in Anchor, and I believe Anchor Nantzee is in imminent danger of falling, giving them the factories and heavy industry to really expand their program."

"But where are they getting all of this knowledge, all of this new and revolutionary weaponry?" the rock-like Makapuua asked him. "From the Seven?"

"No. If the Seven had such weaponry and knowledge it would have used it long ago. Coydt had amassed a mas¬sive amount of ancient writings over the years, and had whole teams of his people working on them. From those writings he created the Flux amplifiers, and it is from those writings that weapons such as this are springing. Small items of use to Fluxlords are being parcelled out to secure their complete cooperation, but most of it they are keeping for themselves. I daresay the Seven would like to get their hands on those books as much as we would. But. like Matson's shotgun, science is proving more powerful than sorcery."

"Then they must be attacked and stopped at once," Krupe put in. "They must be contained or eliminated."

Mervyn stared at him. "How? The leaders keep to Anchor, where we are powerless, and they are so paranoid and secretive that they are nearly impossible to infiltrate on a high level. What forces can stop them, when they have weapons that in an instant can return an entire army to its Flux components? They are driven and they are ruthless. Bakha was determined to resist them, and it did so to its last ounce of strength. It cost them fully ninety percent of their population. Anchor Logh, or New Eden as they call it, no longer has a population problem. Half of it now lives in Bakha. Far worse, from our point of view, is that they have the same goal as the others—inter-Anchor communi¬cations. And they are unencumbered by the Church's re¬strictions on research. And they barter just enough with unscrupulous Fluxlords to get what they need by magic. Above all, they are pragmatists."

"But at the cost of some of their best minds," MacDonna pointed out, "considering what they do to their women."

"Quite so," Mervyn agreed, "but that is far less a handicap if you have the blueprints for what you need set out in front of you, lacking only the industrial capability to create what you need, Somehow, when they're ready, the Seven will be able to talk their way through to that Gate. Bet on it. The south is even now being handled for the Seven by Zelligman Ivan, one of the best. Like any good snake, he can manage to wiggle through the smallest of cracks. Right now he's thinking of ways to get himself in close to the New Eden leadership. Not inside, but enough to ask a favor when needed."

"But this is terrible!" Talanane exclaimed. "What you are saying is that the doom we have so long fought is not only coming but is inevitable!"

"Not inevitable. Nothing is inevitable until it is accom¬plished and proven so by hindsight. What I am saying is that we have been badly finessed, outmaneuvered, and outthought. The true danger is not imminent. I would say it is years away, perhaps many years. Finally, though, conditions that have always been right for us are turning right for them. It had to happen, sooner or later. In a way, it's our fault, for the old system served us well and we helped destabilize it. Perhaps not. If indeed the former Queen of Heaven is Haldayne's sister, they already had control of the old Church. Perhaps we made it harder, not easier."

There was an almost collective sigh of resignation. "Then what can we do?" Krupe asked hesitantly.

"We can forget about the other clusters, the ones totally under control, except for what we're doing now, and suggest to the Church that it strengthen its guard at the temples. We should concentrate our own efforts on secur¬ing the center, for if we hold just one Gate we hold them all. Pool our forces. Four of us on the western cluster— Anchors Qwantzee, Chahleh, Gorgh, and Ecksreh, four others on the eastern center—Anchors Tezgroph, Yonkeh, Abhel and Doltah. I don't care if we have to sit, one on top of each temple entrance itself. Plan it out among you. But one must be held at all cost. They can move, but they cannot sustain a move for very long."

"And you?" MacDonna asked him. "Where will you be?"

"I'll be down there with Zelligman, watching him and everything else like a hawk. And if Anchor Logh starts talking even the most idiotic nonsense to Anchor Bakha, you all will be the second to know." His mind was already very much focused on Zelligman Ivan, wondering just what the man was up to now. . . .

3

A LITTLE FAVOR

They never had a name for the small Fluxland Mervyn had created for them north of Anchor Logh, but they never needed one. To Cass it was just "home," and to Spirit— well, names wouldn't mean much to Spirit.

It was a pretty place, a garden with a nice stream and waterfall and plenty of flowers and fresh fruit and vegeta¬bles growing wild. Spirit wouldn't eat cooked food, but little Jeffy had to have some, even though he stayed on his mother's breast for a very long time.

Spirit was a tall, beautiful, slender woman with long auburn hair and a creamy tan complexion. She lived more or less in a world of her own, unable to speak or under¬stand anyone, unable to use or make use of any human-made tools or artifacts. While Coydt van Haas had originally used the kidnapping and spell on Spirit as a way to hurt Cass, and to divert her from his bigger plans until it was too late to stop him, the spell had been broken once, while Coydt was turning their home of Anchor Logh into a male sex fantasy. But she had been so revolted by her old friends' and family's acquiescence to this weird new order of things that she had chosen once again and for all time to return to what she'd been in Flux.

And the Soul Rider continued in her. The strange energy creature lived in some kind of symbiotic relationship with its host, and could only be perceived by powerful wizards like Cass and Mervyn, and then only as a doubled aura.

Spirit was an eternal child, but she had a child. Jeffron, who early on needed his grandmother's care. Cass felt useful and secure during that period, after forty years of stress in which she had almost, but not quite, revolution¬ized World. But she found her patience short and thin, and soon had to depend on those people Mervyn had sent— strange half-animal creatures of Flux and his imagination, creatures who'd once been human—to handle the routine chores.

Little Jeffy was a tiger and a delight, too, but it was clear that this Fluxland, so perfect for his mother, was not a place where he could grow and develop and learn. Ultimately, Mervyn suggested sending the boy to school in an Anchor up north, with later training part-time in Globbus. the Fluxland which trained and developed half the wizards of World. Cass had to agree. For Jeffy had the power, as his parents and grandmother had had before him. and only time would tell how strong he might become. He would be home for frequent visits, of course.

Spirit was sad at this, but seemed to understand why it had to be, and overall took it better than her pragmatic mother. For Cass, the boy's departure simply left her with nothing to fill the days and nights: with no purpose at all.

She brooded. She loved Spirit more than anything, but her daughter's condition made it impossible to get close to her, and was a constant reminder to her of her past.

Cass had been depressed most of her life, but action and events had always served to divert her mind. Now there was nothing, and she sank into a total gloom. Although she was famous over all the world, she considered herself worse than a failure, and made a good case for that judgment. She'd failed at romance, she'd done worse than fail as a parent—she'd exposed her child to the condition she was now in—and her actions had cost so many lives, eventually including the life of her father, the one human being she'd loved above all others. She had led an army that had taken half the planet, something no one else had ever dreamed of doing, yet the Empire stalled and col¬lapsed in ruins when she could no longer lead it, and the old and new Church had reconciled in a way that might have been more honest but was certainly no more progres¬sive.

She'd wanted to travel World, not conquer it, as a girl, but that was next to impossible now. There wasn't much fun in seeing the remains of what she'd built, in finding out that the changes had, after all, been mostly cosmetic. She felt as if she belonged nowhere, a ball adrift after plowing through a perfectly ordered display. Her failure at romance was the one thing she felt desperately.

She took to having long, elaborate fantasies in the gardens, lying there naked and half-dreaming. She was fifty but looked twenty-five, and she had had sex only once in her life. Not that she couldn't have it now, for she was a powerful wizard and all the binding spells limiting her were gone. Yet she feared failure and rejection more than ever, and feared hurting anyone else.

She imagined herself as a voluptuous sex bomb, and knew that she could change herself into that image at any time, but she didn't have the guts to do so. She imagined herself as a man, and thought that had possibilities. She'd always been a tomboy, always looked like a boy, dressed like a boy, and did a man's job, and she was proud of that. She'd spent so much time acting as a boy she just about thought of herself as one. She liked the perfect female form, such as Spirit's, but it just wasn't her, and what attracted her in the men she did find attractive was an aura of strength, of competence, of being in control. Few men she'd met fit that description, and certainly if she took on a male form that quality, to her mind, would be lacking as well. She'd never liked living lies, yet she saw her whole life that way and wasn't about to create another.

Because she'd conquered half a world, creating and running a Fluxland, which she could learn to do through Mervyn, didn't really appeal to her, either. The trouble was, the way her fantasies were, it'd wind up being too much like Coydt's version of Anchor Logh.

She was tempted by drugs, but was immune to them. Yet she did drink, quite a lot. It was pleasant to be drunk and know that one could banish an upset stomach and a hangover with a wave of the hand. She visited Mervyn's Fluxland of Pericles and found in its vast and ancient library many spells for exciting the pleasure centers, and these helped. They stopped her brooding, anyway.

Mervyn kept trying to get her interested in something— the Codex she'd begun to assemble of all the ancient writings, politics, and teaching at Globbus—but nothing really appealed to her after a while. She just drifted aimlessly, wallowing in her guilt and self-pity, feeling her life was over and wasted but unable to bring herself to terminate it.

She thought often of Suzl, made over by binding spell into a gorgeous sex object, and wondered who'd gotten the better of the deal. Coydt had cursed Suzl to everlasting slavery, it was true, but no worse a one than citizens of most Fluxlands endured. And there were compensations. She'd been cursed to eternal beauty, to eternal sex appeal, and, most mercifully, to ignorance so that she would be happy. She had pitied Suzl for that, but Coydt had cursed Cass as well by removing from her every binding spell, setting her aimlessly adrift and showing the lie of all she had built up. One was free, and powerful, the other weak and a slave—-and who was the happier?

Damn Coydt van Haas! He had worked such exquisite, such perfect evil upon World and then died so that he paid nothing for those deeds. He was at peace, and his victims continued to suffer.

And yet, Cass was still wanted. The Church would richly reward anyone who got rid of her. Its leaders feared her return as a renewed and this time perhaps fatal blow to the social structure. All the wizards she'd defeated who still survived wanted her—boiled, fried, or any other way—as did relatives of those thousands killed in her useless wars. None of this worried her. Between Mervyn's powers and her own, home was secure. One could not even find it without an invitation, for no strings led to or from it. And she was a powerful wizard in Flux and a formidable opponent with gun or knife or sword in Anchor.

Yet Coydt had beaten her, and broken her self-confidence forever. She could never be sure anymore just who was the stronger, and that made her reluctant to use her powers.

She had lost all track of time, for it wasn't relevant. Time was measured only in the growth of Jeffron, who now visited less and less frequently. He was a strapping one hundred eighty-two centimeters tall, lean, and muscu¬lar now, with coal-black hair and his mother's green eyes. He was smart and powerful, but seemed rather aimless and impetuous, the sort of young man who knows he looks good and can get whatever he wants, but hasn't decided what yet; willing to try almost anything once, but never satisfied. She loved him, and worried about him, but feared to give him any advice or direction. Who was she to screw up yet another life?